Dualist: You see, the question is why should this specific sensation, this "redness", accompany the whole chain of events that follow from the impact of photons of a certain energy on the retina?
Me: Well, any specific sensation is probably arbitrary -- but it must be some sensation --
D: But why "some"? Why should there be any sensation? Not to mention, where does such a thing come from ? how, out of simple matter and energy, do we get sensation, this redness?
M: How else could information be conveyed?
D: Well, lots of ways, but let's take one: as a bit stream.
M: So are you asking why we don't perceive a string of 1's and 0's instead of the sensation red?
D: Yes.
M: Okay, but now you've just broken the problem into smaller chunks -- how would we perceive the first bit in the stream, say a "1"? As an actual numeral?
D: As any sort of token. As a certain voltage level, say.
M: And how would we perceive that voltage level? We'll assume not as a needle pointing at some number on an internal volt-meter ?-- but how else? As a little shock?
D: Well, maybe.
M: But then wouldn't that be a sensation?
D: Alright, but we've actually dodged around the main point -- why does there need to be this inner perception at all? This is just the old homunculus answer, isn't it -- our eyes send a signal to a little television screen inside our skulls, where a little man watches?
M: Yes, and then how does he (or she) see? But it's precisely sensation that puts a stop to that infinite regress. I think you're right if you're just objecting to my use of the word "perceive" in this regard -- I really should have used "experience". So my question should have been: how do we experience the first bit in the stream? Or how do we experience any information?
D: Well, information is just difference --
M: Exactly! So then it hardly matters whether we experience this "difference" a bit at a time (so to speak), or in 24-bit chunks -- millions of colors! -- the simple point is that the tokens of information must be different, and that's all that sensations, or qualia, are.
D: No! That's not all they are! They're actual feelings -- that is, they actually feel like something, they're not mere abstract differences, which is the whole point here.
M: But my point is that they must feel like something for that information to be actually experienced --
D: Alright, fine, but then it's experience that's the issue here -- why and whence does this come about? Why should there be experience at all?
M: Okay, now we're getting to the heart of the matter -- or the heart of the heart. You'll grant that without experience there is no consciousness?
D: Yes, fine.
M: So really you're asking why should there be consciousness, yes?
D: Yes. I'm not happy playing the anti-Socrates, by the way, but I'll put up with it a while longer.
M: Thank you. (I'm sure I'll return the favor.) But what kind of answer to that question would satisfy you? If I could show that consciousness was functional, would that do it?
D: Umm --
M: Maybe not. Perhaps you're not really asking why there should be consciousness, but how there can be consciousness?
D: Look, it just comes down to the fact that you don't find red or blue in nature, nor in our brains, but only in our minds.
M: Yes, that far we can go together. But for you, I think, that's pretty much the end of the road. Whereas I would like to take at least another step or two, or try to, by saying, first of all, what that word "mind" means, and then saying what it means for something to be "in the mind".
D (laughing): Those are ... giant steps, wouldn't you say?
M (tentatively): Umm ... maybe.
(Possibly to be continued.)
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